This is my experience. What's yours?

[Blossom]

TRIGGER WARNING: sexual abuse mention, self harm, and suicide
This post is really, REALLY, really long…

These are my experiences that I believe have lead to the development of my PTSD and my SZA.

I think everything started when I was 12 years old. My moods started to get a bit whacky when I was 12. My mother took me to multiple therapists, saying that I was depressed. I was depressed, but at the same time, I had periods of extreme hyperness. I remember one day in 6th grade, my class was staying after school to set up a play. I was helping out at first, but then I started to get really hyper and started doing cartwheels and jumping jacks around the room. It was funny at first, to the other kids, but then it started to get annoying. Everyone kept telling me to calm down, but I just COULDN’T no matter what. I just couldn’t stop bouncing around and being hyper.

Around the age of 14 or 15, I started to exhibit traits of anxiety. I was constantly picking at my face and creating huge, hideous scabs all over my forehead and lips. My dad told me that I looked diseased, but I had so much trouble with not picking at my face and scalp. I think I started to have thought problems at this time. Sometimes I would get anxious and thoughts would just circulate in my mind, over and over.

At age 15, I was taken advantage of by a 19 year old guy on a cruise ship. I was naive and stupid, and he was manipulative and a liar. He told me that he was actually 17, but I discovered through his MySpace that that was a lie. At age 16, my boyfriend at the time sexually abused me. He would make me do sexual things that I did not want to do (I would even tell him no). That relationship lasted for 3 months.

I think my disorganized thoughts and delusions started to really pick up when I was 17 years old. I would lay awake some nights until 3am, thinking about how my boyfriend at the time ‘liked’ other girls or thinking about how he was probably deceiving me in other ways. Around the age of 18, I started to have outbursts of anger or sadness. My boyfriend once told me that “when I am sad, I’m the saddest person he’d ever met, but when I’m happy, I’m the happiest person he’d ever met.” My moods were very extreme.

At age 17, I started to see a “laser hair removal doctor”. I would go to the visits with my mother, but at the age of 18, he persuaded me into going alone. I wish I had never done so. With our new “private” sessions, he started making inappropriate comments and asked me inappropriate things. It got so bad, that one day he sexually molested me. That experience really screwed me up and largely contributes to my PTSD.

My first big mental break was when I was 18. I started having delusions about all clothing being sexual and objectifying. I also started to develop delusions about sexulization in the media, thinking that all women were being objectified and dehumanized. I thought that men only thought of women in the sense of having sex with them/us. I felt like men and the world only wanted women for their bodies - like women are nothing more than a sexual thing for their pleasure and control.

My emotions started to get very strong and out of control around that time. I began cutting myself to escape the emotional torment; physical pain was less difficult than emotional pain and it helped to break the cycle of painful thoughts and feelings and instead gave me physical pain to focus on. Cutting got gradually worse and worse. At one point, it stopped helping enough, so my only “logical” option was suicide. I just couldn’t cope any longer. I attempted suicide at age 18, but I failed, obviously. I was hospitalized in a teen mental ward for 1 week and put on Lithium for my moods.

Lithium helped my moods significantly. I was feeling so much better by the end of the week - not cured, but much better. Suicide was slowly looking like the wrong thing to do. When I was discharged from the hospital, I was kept on Lithium, but only temporarily. I’m not sure exactly when, but at some point, my mental health started to deteriorate again. I started to cut again, mostly focusing on my arm. The cutting felt like my only real way to cope, to rid myself of the emotional pain. Sometimes I would cut simply to avoid suicide, as I felt I needed to escape, but to avoid suicide I had to do something else that caused harm that wasn’t so permanent. Cutting eventually lead to burning; the burns were pretty bad. I eventually stopped, because one burn was so bad that it made my skin boil and slough off.

When I was 19, my long-term boyfriend and I broke up, temporarily. During that time, my so-called best friend invited me over to his house and referred to me as his “new play thing”. Those words pierced my soul and still do. Because of his wording, I felt like I was nothing more than a sexual object, and so I went to his house and let him take advantage of me. Also at 19, I had a date who date-raped me. He tricked me into being alone with him (he originally said his roommate would be there) and locked me in his apartment before sexually advancing on me.

After about 4 months, I got back together with the long-term boyfriend mentioned previously. From the moment we got back together, the relationship was a bit rocky. I started getting into fights with my boyfriend about other women’s clothing and things on TV. I felt threatened and uncomfortable when other girls were simply wearing short shorts. I started fights with my boyfriend about things like sexualized Carl’s Jr. commercials, TV shows with undie scenes, and even skimpy-dressed characters in video games. Our relationship ended one day when I completely lost my control and grip on my emotions. The girlfriend of my boyfriend’s brother came over to play games one day, and she was wearing a shirt that gaped open and showed a small undershirt that covered her bra. Looking back on it, now medicated, it wasn’t a bad outfit at all, but at the time it was just horribly sexual. I was convinced that everyone was staring and “trying to get a look” at her boobs or something. The night ended with me just freaking out at my boyfriend. I basically accused him of checking her out and I freaked out about how she could even “come over here looking like that”.

After that relationship, my moods shifted to the extremely depressed side of the spectrum for a short while as I recovered from the breakup. After a couple of months, my mood got hypomanic, I think. I started going to clubs, dancing with random guys and girls, and making out with random people. I started dating tons of people, hanging out with friends until 4am, and I started to see ghosts in my house at that time, too. I think it was around this time that I started to see more shadow people, watching me, always there in my bedroom and in the halls. At age 20, I had my first sip of alcohol, and like most first-time alcohol tasters, I started drinking way too much. I started going to parties, getting wasted, and staying up until 5am and then having to wake up at 7am to get ready for work. Somehow, I was surviving on just 2 to 3 hours of sleep per night, and I was actually doing just fine with that amount of sleep.

I got really drunk one night and had to crash at a friend’s house. His roommate raped me while I slept; I only know this because I kept waking up and my pants were down, but then I would pass out again. Also at age 20, another guy who I thought wanted to date me, admitted that he only wanted me so that he could have sex with me. This was very hurtful and added to my PTSD and delusions of what men were really like at heart.

Those friendships eventually fell apart, and so I was left alone and single. At age 21, I started to calm down. I still went to bars by myself and I still stayed up very late playing video games and drinking rum, though. I had one friend left who still hung out with me occasionally, but we mostly went to bars or went shopping. The party scene started to look less appealing with each passing day.

In March of 2014, I met my husband on a dating site, and we hit it off immediately. My hypomania was coming to an end by this time. I was pretty clear minded at the time my husband and I met; my delusions were at a standstill and weren’t troubling me at the time. About a month into our relationship, my depression started creeping back up, just here and there at random. There were a couple of times where my PTSD caused me to have panic attacks and break down, and I think that that sped up the development of my delusions returning. I think that my PTSD and my SZA play off of each other. I think both developed at the same time, both triggered into existence by my past sexual abuse.

Since then, my mental health has slowly deteriorated. I’ve had my ups and downs, but it’s been generally a slow, downward spiral. I started hearing things about a year ago, but I didn’t know I was “hearing things” until somewhat recently. I had periods of time where I couldn’t leave my house because of fear of what I would see. I was scared to see things that would trigger my emotions and thought disorder. I had a lot of intrusive thoughts. Sometimes I would see people having sex in my mind, not because I wanted to, but because it bothered me so much.

I am now medicated on Latuda. So far, it is helping quite a bit with my delusions. I am now able to go to the pool without thinking that everyone is sexualizing each other and myself. I am able to go to the mall without feeling victimized by the displays of sexually clad and attractive models. I am able to watch TV shows where the characters kiss or undress to their undies to get in the shower without feeling afraid that the images will circulate in my brain for days, causing me torment and turning into worse and worse images.

This is my story. What’s yours?

[Xade]

I don’t think I’m ready to post my story in it’s entirety so I won’t. I’ll give you the jist of it. I was apparently molested as a child but it must of traumatized me because I don’t remember it and I haven’t really talked about it or got any details from my parents who told me about it. I had a fairly normal childhood and teenage years. I was somewhat cool, but also got teased. I had a non-existent sex life because I refused to ask anyone out. I was taken advantage of drunk when I was about 13 for my first sexual experience I remember by a girl who may have been a bit older than me. Then years later I penetrated a girl who then refused to have sex with me because we didn’t have a condom. I was given the opportunity to sleep with her later in a car alone, while stoned and didn’t have the balls to make a move. Years later I had sex for the first time and haven’t had much of a sex life but I have been with a few girls.

In my 20s I ended up hanging out with people I worked with who got me into doing coke and smoking crack. Long story short, I ended up hanging out with drug dealers and dealt coke with them. I’m in the process of trying to get out of this right now.

Now I’ve been living at my parents for the last 4 years taking a lot of supplements trying to cure what I think is either cancer or somatic delusions. I’m too scared to go to a doctor, plus I don’t believe in doctors really. The symptoms are subsiding so I think I am doing it successfully. I’m trying to trade forex to get me out of this financial hole I am in so I can get my own place again.

All the while, since I was 18 I’ve suffered from me being God or the Devil delusions while friends I hung out with in high school talk to me in my head, negatively and sometimes positively.

Did I mention I’ve abandoned all my friends from high school as soon as I turned 18 and everyone I met since because of my delusions? Well I have. That’s about it.

[Xade]

I’ve also used meth in 2 separate periods in my life and I am finally kicking a life long weed addiction.

[Anna]

I relate with some of this. I am sorry you have had such a painful time and have come into contact with so many awful men. Glad you eventually found your “Mr Right” though!! And that you are improving in your delusional thoughts!!

My story is also very long and I must’ve shared it a million times. It started when I was 3 years old. I had vivid hallucinations mostly at night time, hearing voices coming from my fan, seeing the characters in my painting move and talk, my toys “breathed” so I believed they were alive. Little men climbing around in the covers. Stuff like that.

By 5 the symptoms had turned from fascinating and fun to terrifying. I began seeing demented and horrible faces in things and made my mom take a flower painting out of my room due to the “monster” faces in it. I began having violent and horrific nightmares at night that a 5 year old should not have been having, watching my loved ones get slaughtered or being killed myself in very graphic ways and it was usually blamed on me. I got so much anxiety from these nightmares I stayed up as late as I could every night to avoid sleep. But my nights were full of fear. I was convinced I was in great danger and monsters were coming to kill me so I would hide in different areas of the house at night so they couldn’t find me. Eventually I think my mind just sort of broke under all my fear and I started believing I was a strong and powerful werewolf that could defend myself against monsters. This belief lasted for the next 8 years and grew immensely in complexity to obsession level.
In addition to this I developed a bunch of nervous tics and had sadistic feelings I didn’t understand. I wanted to hurt things and cage them and acted it out with my toys.

When I was 10 I first started to get feelings of depression. I told my mom I felt empty inside. At 11 I was sad all the time despite having a pretty great life and didn’t understand why. Well, a mostly great life. My dad is a very explosive person who goes into huge fits at random things and during this time period of my life he began to emotionally abuse my mom. It happened too many nights to count, I’d dread when I started hearing the yelling. He would cuss her out and insult her until she ran away to the bedroom sobbing. He would scream at us too, never hurt us but I’d have nightmares where he’d snap and do it. I was prepared to call the police if I had to, he was very frightening during his fits. I hated him so badly I fantasized about killing him.

At 12 I had my first major depressive episode. I felt like a boulder was on my chest, very heavy and empty. I withdrew into myself and stopped talking to other people. I became isolated and people saw me as weird. Meanwhile I was still having paranoia and whatnot at night and had started especially getting it in the bathroom, and sometimes I would become so frightened for my life in the shower I would jump out with soap still in my hair and wash my hair in the sink instead.

At 13 I found God and became deeply devoted to him. I stopped believing I was a werewolf, my nervous tics resolved.

At 14 I finally came out of my depressive episode and fell into full psychosis. My beliefs were all spiritual now. Believing angels controlled my life, thinking I was God, an entity from another dimension, etc. At 15 I felt I was having a spiritual revolution. I started hallucinating frequently again (my hallucinations had sort of died off around 8 and became rare) but the hallucinations were now more trippy in nature like seeing floors swirl and walls melt and pretty colorful swirling lights and whatnot. I began talking to God and Jesus and other entities like angels and entities I thought were my spirit guides.

At 16 suddenly everything went downhill. An entity began molesting me. I felt everything physically but could not see anything it was as though an invisible person were doing this to me. I could hear it speak to me and it said awful and terrible things and verbally degraded me as it did so. The molestation progressed into full rape and other sexual acts and was very severe accompanied by psychological and even physical abuse. It was torture. It happened every night for a number of hours and then eventually it was happening every day and night. Nightmares, sleep paralysis, horrific paranoid delusions, my first major psychotic episode. Believed the devil was going to kidnap me and impregnate me with the antichrist. Was afraid to think in case he heard my thoughts and found me. Thought clouds were working for him and read messages in them often and was scared they’d take me to hell. Covered room in salt and oil to keep out evil, slept with bible repeating same verses over and over, crossed head with holy water, did all kinds of things but the abuse continued and so many things happened that still have me questioning if it was real or not to this day.

Then at 17 we moved (I’ve moved a lot in my life like every couple of years basically) and the abuse stopped for some reason. However I had developed full blown ptsd from my first episode and became severely depressed and anxious. 110% sex phobic, found a boyfriend and could not handle the levels of anxiety around sexual things and would go into paranoia attacks when it happened thus it was a short relationship (4 months? I wanted it to end sooner) Sex to me was only a weapon used to control and destroy. I was having problems with dissociation and derealization. I was like a zombie in school. At home I was in so much pain I was fantasizing about suicide 24/7. I made a plan to do it and was going to attempt it before graduation from hs but God told me I could not do it so I had to listen. I told my mom of my issues but she didn’t help me and was judgemental “What do you have to feel bad about?? All you do is sleep all day!!”

I started seeing the school psychologist because I needed to do something or I’d kill myself. I was in indescribable amounts of pain. At night I was kept up w bad paranoia that my reflection was going to kill me and went through a number of delusions. One of my friends at 16 who I had involved in my delusions had told me she thought I needed help though and that made me question the reality of my experiences and if I was ill or not. But I was too self conscious to discuss any of that w the school psychologist because my parents had raised me to believe in the evils of the mental health system and not to trust it. So I only talked about the anxiety and depression and censored it a lot.

Then college happened and I improved immensely since I was out of what I felt at the time a toxic home environment. (Constant yelling, parents absent a lot, felt like kids were running the house, etc) I started seeing an actual psychologist through my school and did CBT which helped immensely with me learning to cope. I still was too afraid to talk about my psychosis.

My sophomore year I began to realize a lot of what I experienced was related to ptsd but realized if I wanted help for my ptsd I had to talk about my psychosis since that’s what it came from so I got up the courage and talked about it with a private therapist unassociated with the school. I was set up with a psychiatrist who I didn’t like, set up with another psychiatrist, and then both dumped me because they were terrible, it was an awful time. I had a psychotic episode in the summer going into sophomore year where like you I felt in danger like every man was going to rape me like the evil spirit did and was terrified any time I was alone with a guy or when one talked to me. I was in and out of depression and mini psychotic episodes throughout almost all of college.

Then summer going into junior year I had another major episode and was paranoid thinking people were going to come after me and break into my apartment through the window even though I lived on the 9th floor and thought people were watching me through cameras on my devices and covered them all up. Met my new therapist, a nurse practitioner, who I still see today who gave me my current diagnosis of major depression w psychotic features and ptsd. She is very good and I like her. I was first prescribed meds at 19 but dumped them because I was psychotic and too paranoid.

When I came out of the episode I was sane enough to go on them and did but I experienced terrible side effects. I went through many meds, all helped me with my mental symptoms but gave me terrible physical problems. Went through a lot of denial of me not needing meds, whether or not I really had issues, etc.

Had serious major depressive episode summer of my junior year going into senior that wound me up in a partial hospitalization program because I sliced my thigh up with a knife. They wanted me to do inpatient but I refused because I wanted to stay in at least one of my summer classes. Ended up failing one of them anyways.

Then my senior year of college I had another depressive episode…it was very difficult…I have failed so many courses in college and had to retake…also some of the failures were due to my sleep disorder which popped up when I was 15 in which I get sleep attacks that feel like I have been given sedatives and then fall asleep to vivid hyperrealistic often disturbing dreams. (At 20 I was told I probably had narcolepsy but the sleep test didn’t catch my sleep attack thus came back normal…and I wasn’t able to receive medication…) Did DBT group therapy which was also pretty helpful.

And now I am at a very good place in life. I feel I have really learned to be proactive in dealing with my disorders. I have accepted I need to be on medication for life and am still looking to find the right combination. I am doing very well. I have come a long way with my ptsd but I still have my bad days as I have my bad days with everything else. Mostly I feel I have become a battle hardened veteran and know how to deal with things now. I am almost graduated college with my bachelors degree and will be off to nursing school after. I have great hope for the future. I am still tormented by demons but I know I am stronger than them. I have great faith in my ability to survive and succeed and am proud of my strength.

That’s pretty much it!!

[Moonwalker]

I’m writing here to briefly describe my experience to see if anyone has had anything similar. I’ve
never read of a similar experience so any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

It all started when I thought the people upstairs were talking about me smoking on the balcony.
Soon those voices followed me to my job and spoke to me there. Soon i could also hear people in my office talking to me and to each other (even though they weren’t). Other voices also
started to appear to be coming from the a/c//heat units in my apt. And over a short period of time these voices became characters in a virtual, game-like world that overlapped the real
one. My interactions became one of conflict, like battles where i was able to create objects or soldiers to fight against innumerable forces that would attack me. One example of a non fighting situation was where i created a team of specialists that would live in the lobby of my
building, but could be called upon to remove bugs (listening devices) from my
apartment put there by outside forces. It was a constant cat and mouse game.
Also in this virtual/game world I had assassins come after me as well as
ghosts and i could sense where they were along with other characters. I could not see them with my eyes open (except for one time with the ghosts thru a glass door) but i could see where
they were in my mind and feel them if they were close.

Also to mention, one time I had a magic eye like affect looking into a computer
screen where I could see moving video of me traveling in a boat going down a
river in a jungle. Another visual hallucination i had appeared as a portal in the ceiling of my bedroom where i could control where i went, and where i went was a place with many crumbling
stone block buildings (i thought it was hell, though i saw no lava).

At one point, some of the characters said i “beat the game” and would be let go from it.
This was a relief as they had made me repeat many many times that “this is real”. However their
attempt to kill me and therefore release me from the game was unsuccessful, and
instead i ended up with unlimited powers. I would still be attacked, along with some friends i had made (who i defend to this day) but I became only limited my my imagination to create ways,
objects, technology… ect to fight them with. However, this power gives me limited ability to actually stop hearing voices. This parallel world remains persistent and is one in which i live on a daily basis, in addition to the reality we all know.
As a result of these powers, if i think about something it usually happens which can be very bad, so most the time when I’m “logged into this world” i picture myself on the moon, far away from anything i can destroy as possible.
Just to recap a few of the characters: Secret Ops communication guys, co-workers, neighbors, parents, Orbs, God, the Lucifer, ordinary people in large groups, people with special powers, Monsters (with portals to this world), assassins with laser guns, Ghosts (i would feel chills while walking over/thru them), Aliens (Zetas and Betas), Computers (that talk), police… just to name a
few. Also, the “world” contains heaven and hell, the earth, outer space and everything it contains. There’s even a way to die, go to hell, make your way to heaven, and come back to earth.
I’ve been on medication for over a year now which makes things easier, but this other world still remains. Has anyone come across an experience like this? Or would like to share some comments. The voices I’ve read about don’t appear to possess a place and are usually limited to a few. Any feedback would be appreciated. I’m classified as schizoaffective as I have
Bipolar 1 too. Also, please share your experiences too.